The present disclosure relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a program. Particularly, the present disclosure relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a program for performing processing so as to reduce jaggedness that occurs in images.
When an image captured by a camera is output for printing or displaying, for example, there is a case where the image of an object is output with step-like jagged contours, different from the original contours of the object.
The step-like jagged shape is generally called “jaggedness”. The Jaggedness is one kind of fold-over noise, and various proposals for image processing to reduce such jaggedness have been made in the related art.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-67272, for example, discloses a technique in which direction determination is performed based on edge detection, and smoothing components in a direction parallel further to the edge is heavily weighted and blending to each direction is performed so as to achieve the reduction of jaggedness.
However, the technique has a problem in that resolution deteriorates because, if edge preservation smoothing is performed using pixels of which centroids are deviated, smoothing is shown in pixels that are deviated in the vertical direction to the edge in a sub-pixel unit.
In addition, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2009-070123 discloses a technique of suppressing emphasized jaggedness by using a super resolution technique and making a low-resolution image in the periphery of edges have high resolution.
However, there is a problem in the super resolution technique in that the amount of calculation is enormous, and therefore, it is difficult to realize the technique in a small-scale circuit.
Furthermore, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-234623 discloses a technique of generating a high quality image with reduced jaggedness by adjusting positions of images that are consecutively captured and overlapping the images.
However, the technique has a problem in that the edges are blurred simply with slight deviation in the position adjustment, thereby causing deterioration in resolution.
In addition, there is another problem in that it is very difficult to accurately calculate position deviation between images taking both a global motion, which is motion information of the entire images, and a local motion, which is motion information of some images, into consideration, and therefore, it is difficult to enhance resolution in all areas in the images.